Gordon Gekko RIP?

With what appears to be impeccable timing, Hollywood is awash with reports of the imminent return of Gordon Gekko, the ultimate master of the universe, in a reprise of the 1987 blockbuster Wall Street. With a working title Money Never Sleeps, the new movie will see Gekko released from jail to confront the financial market meltdown afflicting modern day Wall Street.

Twentieth Century Fox is apparently fast-tracking the production and has commissioned Alan Loeb a screenwriter from US drama 21 to write the script.

This isn't the first time the movie studio has attempted to revive the braces-bedecked Wall Street anti-hero. Screenwriter Stephen Schiff spent the best part of the past year working on a script before delivering his final draft for the sequel - in July, just before the walls came tumbling down.

For his research, Schiff went to London, Dubai and New York to meet with some of the brightest minds in finance.

"I asked everyone I talked to what their imagination of disaster would be. What were they afraid of? What would cause the Big Meltdown?" he says in a column about this experience of how reality trumped the fantasy for Tina Brown's new Internet magazine, The Daily Beast.

The funny thing is, not one of them mentioned the crash in housing prices. Not one mentioned subprime mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. No one imagined Bear Stearns going under, or Lehman Brothers, or AIG. No one foresaw banks Like WaMu and Wachovia crumbling.

"Of all the swords of Damocles hanging over Wall Street, the one that finally lopped our financial heads off had nothing to do with China, nor with terrorists, oil sheiks, evil-genius short-sellers, or any other of our several night terrors," notes Schiff ruefully. "What killed us was good old greed. Our own."